This September, Acorn Network is hosting a event to hear from those that lead in our aged and community care workplaces. (yup, we're pretty excited). These are the people that inspire us. These are the individuals that are leading the way through establishing initiatives, focusing on continuous improvement, and believing in themselves as leaders.

Come join us, on September 13th 2016. It will be a night to remember. (Tix no longer available)

Andrew's first real experience of leadership was early in his psychology career, mentoring teenagers accessing an outreach program. Andrew learnt a lot about what it was to be a role model, and take the time to understand what made each person ‘tick’. From there he spent six years studying and running leadership programs as a management consultant. But he didn’t truly appreciate both the joys and hardships of ‘real’ leadership until taking on management roles later in his career. Leadership has now become the most important and rewarding part of Andrew's role as General Manager at Mirus Australia.

Cynthia is CEO of SummitCare- a NSW based provider of residential and in home services. The organisation currently serves 1200 older Australians everyday across 9 locations (metro and regional) and has three significant developments in the pipeline totalling 120M in capital. SummitCare was a finalist in the Australian Growth Company Awards 2015. She holds a Bachelor of Nursing, an MBA and is a certified practitioner by Kaplan & Norton for balanced scorecard and strategy execution. SummitCare is the only aged care provider to hold two Gold level awards through the esteemed Australian Business Excellence Awards. Cynthia is President LASA NSW & ACT, Immediate past Federal Director of LASA Ltd, Immediate past Chairman, Australian Excellence Foundation, Past Founding Chairman of the Arts Health Institute.

Illana Halliday is CEO of the Aged and Community Services Association (NSW & ACT). Prior to joining the Association, she was a Director of Interesting Times Pty Ltd, a company with a focus on consulting support for people and organisations going through change. Illana's passion is to deliver high quality customer services and value for money; through the development of the people and systems within an organisation, knowing the people around her achieve their best and our efforts make a difference to our communities. She has been a Director of Corporate and Community, Wollongong City Council, held senior executive positions in NSW and Queensland public sector agencies, and was previously a nursing administrator, public sector professional, and has studied and taught Business Administration.

Amanda's leadership journey (so far) has been unorthodox. Like all fascinating trips, her professional and personal journey has not been linear nor traditional. At 15 years old Amanda left school to financially support her mum and younger brother. In her opinion, leadership is both innate but also a learned behaviour. Having built and sold her own businesses, returned to school as an adult learner at the New York Stern School of Business and held executive positions for global companies. Amanda's journey is proof that leadership is complicatedly simple.

Georgia started in admin for HammondCare in 2013, accidentally falling into health and aged care while studying. Georgia's passion for the industry was fostered through her final year of university in a communications role. Nearly two years later Georgia has now helped make video become an extremely popular and thriving way of internal and external communications for HammondCare.

Being the person who produces video communications, she has to work quite closely with the members of HammondCare's executive team, but as junior it was challenging to initially step up and lead these expensive projects as well as advise key members of HammondCare. But she quickly learnt, when you have expertise in a particular area, people value your opinion and guidance. Learning to believe in her strengths has helped lead a new way of communications for an informative and engaging company.